LEGO Brick as Pixel: Self, Community, and Digital Communication

Over the last three years the authors attended Brickworld Conventions for adult and teen fans of LEGO in Chicago. Through interviews, observations, and research they conclude that the LEGO brick is a medium replete with possibilities for creative construction and playful design beyond the expectations of its corporate producers. The history of the brick as a toy infuses play throughout its use, and the Internet provides a forum for adult and teen fans to communicate, critique, and discuss their creations. Online communication is perhaps the most interesting facet of LEGO play. It demonstrates a model of social change with LEGO builders of all ages in dialogue amongst a community of equals. This paper presents a case description of LEGO fans for future research on the burgeoning use of technology for play, communication, and the development of community

Experience and Expression

Two artist-educators analyzed their creative process informed by John Dewey’s concepts regarding the act of expression. The essay interweaves a description of their performance piece with a discussion of conceptual processes, including intermediality and collaboration as crucial in art making, learning, and pedagogical efficacy. Both the creation of the piece and the written analysis were guided by concepts Dewey identified as compression, impulsion, and expression. The authors argue that experience and expression exemplify creative learning and are transferable to knowledge construction in all areas of inquiry. Throughout an aesthetic learning process, deep reflection plays an essential role with interpretation and application becoming the culminating stages. Amid crises in the early twenty-first century, the value for educational theory of an artistic process that leads toward social justice in a democracy is emphasized

Admissibility of Co-Conspirator Statements in a Post-Crawford World

This Article takes the position that co-conspirator statements must be examined on a case-by-case basis to determine whether they are testimonial and thus subject to exclusion under the Confrontation Clause. Further, in light of the fact that the author of the majority opinions in Crawford and Davis was Justice Antonin Scalia, this Article examines whether interpreting the Sixth Amendment as a bar to the admission of certain coconspirator statements would violate an originalist interpretation of that provision. The conclusion reached is that it would not. In the current era of ever-narrowing rights for criminal defendants, reaffirming the law\u27s commitment to this one layer of protection whenever warranted seems to be the least we can do to promote justice

Rapid Development of Clinical Trial Candidates Using Cancer Systems Pharmacology: a Lymphoma Case Study

poster abstractDue to intrinsic complex molecular interactions, the “one disease – one target – one drug” strategy for disease treatment is no longer the best option to treat complex diseases such as cancers. To assess drug pharmacological effects, we assume that “ideal” drugs for patients can treat or prevent the disease by modulating its gene expression profile to a similar level of those in healthy people. A drug that may not have been approved to treat a cancer yet, based on its gene expression target profile is the most successfully at modulating the gene expression to being of similar level to a healthy person is known as drug repurposing. The goal of this study was to develop an in silico framework which would determine which drug(s) could be repurposed to treat more complex disease of interest such as cancers. Using three subcategories of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (Burkitt’s, Mantle, Diffuse Large B-Cell) as case studies, manual curation was done to collect data on drug-protein interaction, drug similarity analysis based on structure and protein target, and curation; disease-protein interactions, and protein-protein interactions. A network will be created from the curated data known as a Pharmacology Effect Network (PEN). The Pharmacological Effect on Target (PET) algorithm will then be used to rank the curated drugs. This ranking will help determine which of the investigated drugs not currently used to treat one of the three subsets of Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma could possibly be recommended to treat them. Although this project was primarily done using manual curation, the framework of each curated relationship used by each curator has been incorporated into a web interface. This webpage will allow for more automation of the curation process with little help from the curator and should improve the speed and accuracy of the curation process. Mentors: Jake Chen7, Xiaogang Wu7, Walter Jessen8 7IU Center for Systems Biology and Personalized Medicine, IUPUI; 8Informatics, Covance, Greenfiel

Nonlinear Transformations and Filtering Theory for Space Operations

Decisions for asset allocation and protection are predicated upon accurate knowledge of the current operating environment as well as correctly characterizing the evolution of the environment over time. The desired kinematic and kinetic states of objects in question cannot be measured directly in most cases and instead are inferred or estimated from available measurements using a filtering process. Often, nonlinear transformations between the measurement domain and desired state domain distort the state domain probability density function yielding a form which does not necessarily resemble the form assumed in the filtering algorithm. The distortion effect must be understood in greater detail and appropriately accounted for so that even if sensors, state estimation algorithms, and state propagation algorithms operate in different domains, they can all be effectively utilized without any information loss due to domain transformations. This research presents an analytical investigation into understanding how non-linear transformations of stochastic, but characterizable, processes affect state and uncertainty estimation with direct application to space object surveillance and space- craft attitude determination. Analysis is performed with attention to construction of the state domain probability density function since state uncertainty and correlation are derived from the statistical moments of the probability density function. Analytical characterization of the effect nonlinear transformations impart on the structure of state probability density functions has direct application to conventional non- linear filtering and propagation algorithms in three areas: (1) understanding how smoothing algorithms used to estimate indirectly observed states impact state uncertainty, (2) justification or refutation of assumed state uncertainty distribution for more realistic uncertainty quantification, and (3) analytic automation of initial state estimate and covariance in lieu of user tuning. A nonlinear filtering algorithm based upon Bayes’ Theorem is presented to ac- count for the impact nonlinear domain transformations impart on probability density functions during the measurement update and propagation phases. The algorithm is able to accommodate different combinations of sensors for state estimation which can also be used to hypothesize system parameters or unknown states from available measurements because information is able to appropriately accounted for